Troops Shot After Taliban Leader's Call

By

Maria Abi-Habib

Updated Oct. 26, 2012 12:32 a.m. ET

KABUL—Two U.S. Special Operations troops were killed by a man in Afghan police uniform on Thursday, a day after Taliban leader Mullah Omar called on more Afghan soldiers and policemen to kill Americans.

ENLARGE

A member of the Afghan Local Police, part of a joint patrol with U.S. troops, searches a motorist in Kandahar province on Thursday.
Reuters

The attack in southern Uruzgan province came a day after two British troops—a female medic and a Royal Marine commando—were gunned down in another suspected insider attack that involved an off-duty Afghan policeman.

Insider attacks have become a critical issue for the U.S.-led coalition. Thursday's U.S. deaths brought to 55 the number of coalition troops killed by their Afghan comrades-in-arms this year, according to coalition statistics. Wednesday's British casualties aren't included in that tally because the investigation is continuing.

This year, more Western troops were gunned down by Afghan soldiers and policemen than by the Taliban. Insider attacks account for one-fifth of all battlefield deaths, which include fatalities from roadside bombs, rockets and aircraft crashes.

These insider attacks have prompted coalition countries such as France to speed up the withdrawal of their troops, and led the U.S. last month to severely curtail joint patrols with Afghan forces.

Mullah Omar, in his message of congratulations for Eid al-Adha, the Muslim holiday of sacrifice this weekend, praised the insurgency's success in infiltrating Afghan security forces. He called on Afghans to "increase your efforts to expand the area of infiltration," adding that "this tactic will achieve more fruitful results."

A coalition spokesman said it wasn't clear whether the latest killings were related to the Taliban leader's message. "That is strangely coincidental," said U.S. Army Col. Thomas Collins, a spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition in Kabul. "The numbers have gone up significantly this year and it's become an enemy tactic. Does this have to do with the Mullah Omar's Eid message? We don't know."

In Uruzgan province's dangerous Khas Uruzgan district, the two members of a visiting U.S. Special Operations team were killed when a man wearing an Afghan police uniform opened fire Thursday afternoon, a coalition official said.

U.S. Special Operations forces, led by the Navy SEALs, have been clearing and holding swaths of Uruzgan in recent months, preparing the province's handover to the Afghan government. But they face challenges, with the army in most cases refusing to patrol without coalition forces and police unable to penetrate insecure areas without U.S. manpower.

In August, members of Khas Uruzgan's Afghan Local Police, a force mentored by the SEALs, told The Wall Street Journal that they hadn't been paid for months by the government, and threatened to join the Taliban. The SEALs, who work and sleep alongside the ALP, said they were less likely to be victims of insider attacks because of the close relationships they had formed.

Anti-American feelings are rife in the Afghan army and police, the two forces that are supposed to take over once the coalition's military mandate ends in 2014. "We call the Americans troops infidels. They may be our allies in military terms, but under our religion they are our enemies," said an Afghan army sergeant serving in Khost province. "The Quran says that Christians and Jews can never be friends of the Muslims."

The British troops killed Wednesday were on a foot patrol in Helmand province's Nahr-e-Saraj district, the country's most violent by number of incidents, according to coalition statistics.

The troops were killed in an exchange of gunfire, according to the U.K. Ministry of Defense. An Afghan policeman who wasn't wearing a uniform died in the firefight, the statement said. The British forces weren't patrolling with Afghan police at the time.

The spokesman for the Afghan police in Helmand, Farid Ahmad Farang, said foreign forces mistook an Afghan policeman for an insurgent and opened fire, killing him. He said a separate patrol of foreign forces then engaged their international counterparts by mistake, killing the medic and the Royal Marine commando in friendly fire. The U.K. Ministry of Defense said it didn't know who initiated the fire and that an investigation was under way.

Fear of insider attacks has affected how the coalition operates. In the eastern province of Nangarhar, a Missouri National Guard patrol commander, Staff Sgt. Michael Davis, recently warned his soldiers to be wary of Afghans in uniform after leaving the base on patrol.

Before venturing out, team member Maj. Dominic Sansone put in a final word about any Afghans who approach with requests for aid or medical assistance: don't help, unless they were hit by the convoy. "If we didn't do it, we're not stopping," he said. "We're all going home."

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